


o magnum mysterium

by ernestdummkompf (JehanFerres)



Category: Gilbert & Sullivan & Related Fandoms, Iolanthe - Sullivan/Gilbert
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, As I go along, M/M, Songfic, also i'm.......making a playlist for this, i'll post the tracklist in the endnotes, this is gay, tolloller's internal monologue is simultaneously insufferable and relatable
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-01 22:54:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11496465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JehanFerres/pseuds/ernestdummkompf
Summary: He would turn up in the Chapel at half past eight to unlock the organ loft, and it would be another half an hour before the choir started to trickle in. And even then, no matter how hard he lectured them, they would be waiting until quarter to nine for the full force of the choir to assemble. They would be there until half past twelve, usually, until the cafeteria opened for lunch, and then that would be his social interaction done for the day.





	o magnum mysterium

**Author's Note:**

> because i am FULLY committed to bringing back the art of the songfic, this particular chapter of this fanfic is best enjoyed while listening to _[this](https://open.spotify.com/user/11122159962/playlist/3w7t8gXXtjTFOXLjgxN8Nd)_ playlist. i'll be doing this with each chapter! (if you don't have spotify, the track-list for this chapter is in the endnotes of this chapter.)
> 
> this is very, _very_ slightly based (in that i also occasionally accompanied hymns in assemblies, and that there was, indeed, a head of music) on my Personal Experiences(tm) of a very christian school where i was (like tollers here) the only a-level music student. on the other hand, the school i went to, as well as being dreadful, had no chapel, and therefore neither an organ or an organ loft, and it wasn't a boarding school. otherwise, i also used to bunk off sports by doing music, but the sport was never cricket and the bunking off was usually attempting to work on my compositions (which i was dreadful at), and not teaching.
> 
> my friend's suggested title for this fic was "FUCK: A Fanfic" and tbh i was really tempted to go with that because i couldn't Fúcken think of something else. i have, as you will know if you have been following my Attempts to produce something good, a huge amount of trouble with titling my fanfics. the title was just the name of the piece of music i happened to be listening to when i remembered that i would... need a title.

“You’re up early.”

There was one thing to be said for the Sixth Form dormitories and that was that, if the students so wished, they could go an entire day – that day being Saturday – without having to encounter another person. Or at least they could if they had the good fortune not to be Tolloller.

However, he could usually go most of the morning, provided that he got up at eight as he usually did every other day, made breakfast, extremely quietly, in the kitchen that he shared with the rest of the first floor of the boarding house (another perk of being in Sixth Form was having kitchens. They were extremely rudimentary and the fire alarms tended to go off if you even attempted the most basic food preparation. But, on the other hand, they _were_ kitchens), without seeing another person.

He would turn up in the Chapel at half past eight to unlock the organ loft, and it would be another half an hour before the choir started to trickle in. And even then, no matter how hard he lectured them, they would be waiting until quarter to nine for the full force of the choir to assemble. They would be there until half past twelve, usually, until the cafeteria opened for lunch, and then that would be his social interaction done for the day.

That was why he was both surprised and a little annoyed to see George Mountararat sitting in the kitchen with what looked like an industrial strength cup of coffee. “And you’re up late,” Tolloller replied, making what he assumed to be the correct assumption that this was, in fact, Mountararat on his way to bed. Usually, if he saw Mountararat on a Saturday morning, he would attempt to wheedle him into joining the choir, but this didn’t seem like the time for it.

Either way, Mountararat ignored Tolloller and had packed up his laptop and left before Tolloller had finished making himself a cup of coffee, so he wouldn’t have had the time to ask, even if he had wanted it. It wasn’t really a surprise, though. Mountararat was inclined to be up until very odd times at the weekend, if he had history to do. Which he inevitably _did_ have. Which was something of a shame, because Mountararat had quite a nice voice.

It suddenly struck him, just as he was out the door, that Mountararat might actually have been interested in what he was trying to make the choir (comprised of students aged between eleven and eighteen, all of them either future or current GCSE and A-Level Music students) learn. It was a somewhat eclectic concert, organised jointly by the heads of the History and Music departments, to be performed on the fifth of November to commemorate Guy Fawkes’ failing to blow up the House of Lords.

Tolloller didn’t understand it, not least because he didn’t know anything much about any of the players involved in the Gunpowder Plot, but he would have preferred conducting to having to listen to fireworks, which were capable of reducing him to tears on bad days. So he had agreed to organise and prepare the choir, as well as accompanying them on the organ (which was extremely exciting, even for him). Either way, given that he loved history, it would be right up Mountararat’s street.

_Tolloller: u actually might enjoy the concert im trying to drag the choir through its abt the gunpowder plot_

_george: How can you have a concert *ABOUT* the Gunpowder Plot_

_Tolloller: ull have to come to it to see :3_

_george: Do Not Make Three-Mouth At Me_

Tolloller laughed as he pushed open the door to the chapel. He knew that Mountararat had a sense of humour that he had buried _somewhere_ – it just only came out when he was extremely sleep-deprived, or otherwise compromised. For example, by Tolloller sending him an emoticon that he inexplicably and unnecessarily hated.

_Tolloller: :3c_

_Tolloller: anyway its music from that time and stuff thats like. Repent Or You Will Die._

_george: Lovely. Sounds right up my street._

To anybody else, Mountararat’s last text would have looked extremely insincere, but Tolloller recognised that he actually meant it, and would probably come along. He sent him another two texts as he was going through the usual ritual of waking up the organ, and then switched his phone off after receiving the response from Mountararat so that he could concentrate rather than getting into a conversation, and so that Mountararat could get some sleep.

The first step of waking up the organ, at least as Tolloller did it (because there were certain rituals that he _had_ to go through when doing this, so that everything would work out alright. First, take off the cover on the keyboard, and dust the keyboard (which seemed to gather dust whatever he did to it). Then, check to make sure all the pedals with all where they had been when he had left it at the end of assembly the previous day (he knew this one was unnecessary). Then make sure all the valves were fully depressed. Finally, switch it on, and then play an A Minor triad, with middle C as the middle note.

By the time he had done this, the first two members of the choir had arrived, slightly early, to help Tolloller set up for the rehearsal. Isaac Chancellor and Iolanthe Duke were two of Tolloller’s closest friends, both in the upper sixth form and both _exceptionally_ tolerant of Tolloller’s strange habits. Isaac actually shared a couple of them, but he had been diagnosed with OCD a couple of years prior, so that was no surprise.

“I suppose you can’t tell us what we’re going to be singing?” Iolanthe asked, in a tired but still wheedling tone, as Tolloller came down from the organ loft, carefully watching his feet. There was something about the staircase leading down into the Chapel from up there that meant that if he wasn’t concentrating fully on the precise position of his feet, he would come tumbling down the stairs. He had done it a couple of times in the past, and he didn’t care to do it again.

“I can tell you what we’re singing in the service tomorrow,” Tolloller said. This was a conversation that they had every tie a new concert was announced, because Tolloller (or the head of music, depending upon who was in charge) wasn’t allowed to reveal the precise songs, but Iolanthe would want to know. “But the concert I can’t even tell George about, so you’re finding out _nothing_.”

Iolanthe giggled. “Oh, go on, then,” she said.

“Okay, the congressional hymns are…” He pulled out the crumpled piece of paper he had them written down on. “The _congressional_ hymns are _Cwm Rhondda_ , _Be Thou my_ Vision, and _Onward Christian Soldiers_.” None of which any of the three of them liked. Still, it was better than _All Things Bright and Beautiful_ , which Tolloller was completely sure that _nobody_ liked, and which he would usually veto if somebody particularly wanted it. “During Communion, it’s _Ave Verum Corpus_ – the Mozart not the… whoever else. And the other Communion one is _Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring_.”

Isaac cringed at the mention of the last hymn. While the whole choir certainly liked to sing it, it was extremely difficult. Besides which, it was a royal pain for Tolloller to play on the organ, and it was one of his weeks to play the organ. “And you _still_ aren’t going to tell us about the concert?”

“You knew that there is going to _be_ a concert,” Tolloller said, somewhat ominously. This was mostly because _he_ knew what was going to be in the concert, and he was fully dreading telling the rest of the choir about it. It was a selection of early music which was, to put it bluntly, a total pain for choirs to sing, let alone those composed of members between the ages of eleven and eighteen. He sometimes thought that the head of music had unrealistic expectations of the choir.

“And you _still_ haven’t managed to persuade George to join the choir?” Iolanthe asked. This was partly because, when you got past the initial layer of haughtiness and self-assured irritability that Mountararat tried to hide behind, he could be quite good company. Also, Iolanthe knew that Tolloller had a crush on Mountararat, and her favourite thing to do was to set up her friends.

“How often do you see him even _come_ to Chapel?” Tolloller asked, deflecting the question somewhat.

“Where does he even go?” Isaac asked. “Because I would have thought somebody would catch him if he stayed in the dormitory.”

“He gets up at the same time as me,” Tolloller explained. “He just goes to the top floor of the library and hides out in the Ancient Languages section. Nobody goes up there because it’s all shit like Old Church Slavonic—“ Which Mountararat could actually have a conversation in, such was the length of time he had been going there to avoid Chapel for— “So nobody ever thinks to look up there.”

“We won’t tell,” Iolanthe said, from where she was sat on one of the chairs in the alto section, somehow putting on eyeliner while looking at her face in an absolutely _tiny_ mirror. Tolloller had no idea how she was able to do it, so he chalked it up to witchcraft.

“Good, because I’m the only person who knows, so if somebody found him I would get personally murdered.”

Just as Tolloller finished saying this, the door opened, and Phyllis Lyon, Strephon Shepherd, Celia and Fleta Cooledge, and Leila Duke all spilled into the chapel. Celia and Leila all looked a little worse for wear, but given that Tolloller had heard them coming back at three in the morning, that was hardly surprising. Fleta, on the other hand (the youngest member of the choir, and the only reason they were able to say that the choir was made up of “eleven-to-eighteen year olds” on the school website), looked fresh-faced and ready to sing.

Celia, Leila, and Fleta all took their places in the soprano section, and Iolanthe moved up to talk to them, while Strephon went to sit in the currently empty bass section. Phyllis, on the other hand, came over to “talk” to Isaac, Tolloller and Iolanthe. Being that this was Phyllis, the other three understood that she was actually planning to eavesdrop, and changed the topic of conversation to avoid anything particularly incriminating.

“Oh!” It suddenly occurred to Tolloller that he was supposed to talk to Iolanthe and Isaac at some point that day. “Iolanthe! And you, Isaac, before I forget…”

“Yes…?” She looked suspiciously at him – partly because she always did, but also partly because she felt completely certain that she was going to get suckered into a solo. Isaac just frowned.

“You know _Rejoice in the Lord Alway_ , right?” he said.

Iolanthe frowned. “Ask Phyllis.”

“No, I’ve already suckered George into singing the tenor.” Which wasn’t _entirely_ the truth. Mountararat had said he’d look at it, but Tolloller could probably blackmail him into it, or say that Isaac and Iolanthe had both agreed and _please_ George you know I need to play the piano.

“Then I’m not doing it,” Phyllis said, winking at Tolloller. Iolanthe and Isaac were both very soft touches, at least where Tolloller was concerned. This wasn’t least because he was very good at making himself look like a sickly puppy that some monster had kicked and then left out in the rain, despite being well over six feet tall and every bit as spindly and gawkish looking as a birch tree.

“And it’s Alto-Tenor-Bass, and George isn’t _really_ a tenor,” Tolloller added, making a mental note to buy Phyllis a drink in exchange for tossing this metaphorical lifesaver into the water.

“Fine, fine,” Iolanthe said. “Just give me the music at some point.”

“I’ve got it in my room, I think.” Tolloller was always glad to have Isaac around, but at the same time he wondered why he hadn’t kept music on past AS Level. “I can run back and get it during the break if you like?”

“You’re _wonderful_ , Isaac,” Tolloller said, “but I have it with me.” He thought for a moment, before turning to Iolanthe with a smile. “Oh – and you know what you were asking me earlier?”

“Yeah?” She grinned.

“This _isn’t_ for that. It’s for the Head’s New Year celebration.” _Now, I just need to persuade George to sing the tenor part._ Fortunately, this wouldn’t be too difficult, now that he had the other two parts. And it wasn’t until the end of the year, so he had plenty of time to bring him around to it.

Even though he wouldn’t usually need the organ until he had thoroughly – and he meant _thoroughly_ – ran through all the harmony for the hymns, Tolloller would go in and awaken it first thing, because it held in his mind that it would sound better, and generally be a more pleasant experience for everybody if he did so. He didn’t haven’t any actual evidence for this, but, then again, there was no evidence _against_ it either, so, as he was inclined to do, he considered himself to be correct.

There were only two latecomers that day, who snuck in and went to their places in the tenor section mid-way through Tolloller running through the soprano line of _Guide Me, O Thou Great Redeemer_. Fortunately, he had noticed that they were missing, because he knew where everybody sat, but he always rehearsed lines in the same order (soprano, alto, tenor, bass), and so Marco Palmieri and Arthur Fitzbattleax (two Year Eleven GCSE Music pupils who Tolloller had a particular eye on) snuck in mainly un-noticed.

Being relatively simple, along with most Church harmony which originated from that era, _Guide Me, O Thou Great Redeemer_ took about fifteen minutes out their rehearsal, as did the subsequent _Be Thou my Vision_ (one of Tolloller’s favourite hymns, because it had a more interesting tune than most of the English hymns he usually took the choir through) and _Onward Christian Soldiers_.

 _Ave, Verum Corpus_ took maybe twenty minutes, mostly because the choir very rarely _did_ any Mozart. It wasn’t that the head of music (or the head-teacher) didn’t want them to – there just wasn’t much room in the Book of Common Praise for anything that wasn’t English, Welsh, Irish or (sometimes) Scottish. Thus, being unused to the form of the harmonies, it took maybe an extra five minutes for the choir to grasp the song fully.

As Tolloller had predicted, however, _Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring_ fell apart before they could even get to putting together the four harmony parts. Half an hour later, Tolloller was still taking the basses, specifically, through one particularly difficult phrase. He had considerably more patience for this than he had had when he had started conducting the choir, but he still had a limit somewhere.

“ _Okay._ Okay.” He frowned, slamming one forearm down on the keyboard of the piano to get the choir’s attention. “I know you aren’t doing this deliberately, but do you guys want to table this for the time being, so that we can get on with the stuff for the concert? This was only _meant_ to take an hour, at most, but we’re really starting to run out of time.”

When the entire choir seemed to agree, relieved, Tolloller smiled. “Well, talk amongst yourselves for a minute, and I’ll head up to the organ loft and we’ll take it through with the organ. Phyllis, can you and… uh…” He looked around for an arbitrary male chorister. “Isaac. Can you two report back?” This was because he trusted them both to know how the parts should sound.

Tolloller much preferred accompanying the choir on an organ to accompanying them on the piano. It wasn’t anything about the choir, or about the instrument, but he felt like he had to be less guarded and careful when he was playing the organ and therefore wasn’t visible to the others. Even though he knew all of them well enough, he still found the experience of pretending to be _normal_ , in some way, extremely tiring.

It wasn’t something that he extended to Mountararat, and he would be as weird as he fancied around him, because Mountararat was secretly just as odd as him. But even Isaac, Celia and Iolanthe, his closest friends besides Mountararat, got a slightly altered and watered down version of him. Being that he didn’t quite understand how other people thought or functioned, this was a self that he had really created through trial and error. But it seemed to work.

“So?” he asked, when he reappeared from the organ loft, nearly falling down the stairs when his brain had to split the full weight of what he was thinking between looking at his feet and speaking. “Any glaring problems?”

“All fine,” Phyllis said, with a shrug. While this would probably have seemed to be extremely dismissive to anybody but Tolloller, he himself knew that nothing escaped Phyllis’ attention, and that she couldn’t stand anything that she perceived to be incorrect. Thus, he trusted her judgement.

“Isaac?”

“A couple of notes that went a bit flat in the tenor, if I wasn’t being generous. But I think I would put that down to the early hour and not anybody actually not _knowing_ what they were doing.” Isaac was just as fastidious as Phyllis, but he was also considerably harsher than her. Tolloller knew that the errors would be down to the fact that the singers had only got up about an hour ago, and he assumed that Phyllis would have known that any errant notes (at least those that were flat) were caused by the same thing.

“Thank you.” Tolloller went back to the piano, because it was the only place from which he could see the clock without having to stand up on his toes to see past the backs of the pews. “Right, we’ll take…” He considered it for a moment. “We’ll take fifteen minutes, I think. And then we’ll come back and take a look at the music we’re doing for this Bonfire Night concert.” Before he lets them go, he adds. “Dr. Wilkins will be conducting you, and I will be accompanying from up there. So be good.”

Tolloller returned to the organ loft, because he would much rather be up there and also because it was the only place he could get internet. He had put a router in there a few months ago, for the interminably long communion services when he was ordered to be quiet, so that he could talk to Mountararat on Facebook, but it didn’t quite cover the whole of the chapel, and stopped just at the base of the stairs leading down from the organ loft.

He switched his phone back on. Messages on Facebook from both Arthur and Marco, warning him that they had got out of bed late and would therefore be late, to which he replied “ _you both know i switch my phone off when i get here but thx for telling me_ ”.

Otherwise, he had one text from Mountararat, who usually refused to use Facebook’s messaging service because he didn’t want whatever he wrote on Facebook to be preserved for eternity and posterity, and another text from Kitty, Mountararat’s older twin. Both were inviting him out for coffee after rehearsal.

_Tolloller: will if i can but this might run over bc of this bonfire night thing. tell kitty too._

_george: Will do. No pressure but I just realised neither of us have seen you for a week._

_Tolloller: i thought that was intentional ;)_

_george: Let’s just say I had a sudden fit of regret._

_george: Also, please never use that emoticon in my presence again._

_Tolloller: im going to come to your room and personally write ;) on all of ur postit notes now_

At which point Mountararat stopped responding. Tolloller spent his remaining five minutes reading some e-mails about outstanding English coursework (which he didn’t have) and about the Bonfire Night concert (which he was accompanying).

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. guide me, o thou great redeemer (cwm rhondda) - ely cathedral choir  
> 2\. be thou my vision - choir of paisley abbey (traditional)  
> 3\. onward christian soldiers - mormon tabernacle choir (sir arthur sullivan)  
> 4\. ave verum corpus - mozart amadeus mozart  
> 5\. jesu, joy of man's desiring - josh groban and lili haydn (johann sebastian bach)
> 
> notes on this: the only important artist here is number 5, because josh groban sings this so beautifully. he's a wonderful man and i deeply, deeply admire him. like i listened to it ten times over while i was writing the end of this chapter, because when i saw it my brain just went "OH! MY GOD! I HAVE TO LISTEN TO THIS! DROP EVERYTHING!" all the others you can listen to any version you feel like but a choral version i feel captures the full Effect. also the ave verum has to be mozart because that's the version i...........know. and have sung. i like it a lot. onward christian soldiers is only there because it's a sullivan reference, which i'm a sucker for.


End file.
